


Nothing's Perfect

by random_chick



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-03
Updated: 2012-04-03
Packaged: 2017-11-03 00:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/random_chick/pseuds/random_chick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She doesn't know why she's trying to be his friend. He doesn't know why he wants her to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing's Perfect

**Author's Note:**

> Set in an AU-verse where Johanna came to District 12 to help rebuild.

They walk in silence.

Johanna steps lightly through the forest, seemingly at home amongst the trees. Haymitch follows along beside and slightly behind her, making no attempts at moving quietly -- not that he needs to.

They stop a little ways into the forest, with Johanna leaning almost casually up against a tree.

"Why'd you drag me out here?" Haymitch asks irritably.

"Because ever since I came to District 12 you've been jumpy and avoiding me," Johanna says, folding her arms. "And since you won't talk to me when I come to visit you -- which I don't know why I do it, by the way -- I thought getting you out here might get you to open up a little."

"In case you haven't been paying attention, sweetheart, I avoid everybody," he points out.

"This is different," she replies.

And damn her, she's right.

"You remind me of... someone," he says after a moment, the irritation on his face fading and giving way to something that in anybody else might be called vulnerability. "Someone I used to know. You don't look like her, but she... she had a spirit. A bite to her sometimes. And I loved her for it."

Johanna looks at him for a long moment. "Whoever she is, they took her away from you, didn't they?" she guesses. "The Capitol."

Haymitch hesitates slightly before nodding. "After I won, they took my mother and my brother and my girlfriend. They were gone within two weeks after I won."

"Why?" she asks almost gently, resisting the urge to reach out and touch his arm. For one, it's not like her; for another, he's vulnerable enough without calling attention to it.

"The force field. I figured it out, found a way to turn it into a weapon," he says. "The Capitol didn't like that. So they punished me."

"I'm sorry," Johanna says, and she really means it.

"Yeah, well..." Haymitch sniffs and gives a half-hearted shrug. "Nothing I can do about it now."

"Except try to drink away the pain," she points out tartly.

"Watch it, sweetheart." There's something dangerous in his voice, something almost like anger.

"It's the truth," she says simply. "I'm not saying anything about it either way, I'm just saying that it's your chosen coping mechanism. We all have them. You drink, Katniss hunts, Peeta bakes."

"And what about you?" He arches his eyebrows.

"I'm a bitch." She shrugs. "I've made my peace with it. It's even kind of fun sometimes. You can say anything you want when you're a bitch."

"Even though it pushes people away." Now it's his turn to be tart and pointed.

"Yeah, well..." she echoes. "Nothing's perfect."

"No," he agrees, reaching out to tuck a lock of her dark hair behind one ear. "Nothing's perfect." It's a lesson they've all learned quite well.

"But I deal." It's a weak statement and Johanna knows it.

Haymitch knows it, too, knows it and lets it go anyway. "You know what, sweetheart?"

"What?"

"I think we need a drink."

Johanna laughs softly. "I couldn't agree more, my friend."

And they are friends, in a way, friends brought together by the aftermath of it all. They understand each other in a way that nobody else quite gets, not even Katniss. Johanna knows she can trust Haymitch to let her be herself, bitchy though she might be. He'll never push her because he understands better than most what it's like to have nobody.

It's because of this that she takes his proffered arm and allows him to begin leading her from the forest.

Nothing's perfect, but this might just be close enough.


End file.
